EPA
Staffers Protest EPA Children Study
(BeyondPesticides, November 3, 2004)
The recent announcement of a new EPA study in Florida to assess children’s
exposure levels to pesticide use inside the home has caused an outbreak
of internal protests and emails among EPA staffers, according to last
Saturday’s Washington Post.

According to emails obtained from the
Post, EPA staffers in Georgia and Colorado have shown deep concern.

“Suzanne Wuerthele, the EPA's regional toxicologist in Denver,
wrote her colleagues on Wednesday that after reviewing the project's
design, she feared poor families would not understand the dangers associated
with pesticide exposure.

‘It is important
that EPA behaves ethically, consistently, and in a way that engenders
public health. Unless these issues are resolved, it is likely that all
three goals will be compromised, and the agency's reputation will suffer,’
she wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post. ‘EPA researchers
will not tell participants that using pesticides always entails some
risk, and not using pesticides will reduce that risk to zero.’

Troy Pierce, a life
scientist in the EPA's Atlanta-based pesticides section, wrote in a
separate e-mail: ‘This does sound like it goes against everything
we recommend at EPA concerning use of [pesticides] related to children.
Paying families in Florida to have their homes routinely treated with
pesticides is very sad when we at EPA know that [pesticide management]
should always be used to protect children.’”

Linda S. Sheldon,
acting administrator for the human exposure and atmospheric sciences
division of the EPA's Office of Research and Development, defended the
study design and $970 paid to participants by citing the need for exposure
data the agency lacks to make risk assessments. Sheldon also argued
that considering the extent of tracking and monitoring required of the
adult participants, "Nobody can go into this study just for that
amount of money," Sheldon said.

The $9 million study will survey 60 infants and toddlers for pesticide
and chemical exposure over two years in Duval County, Florida. Under
criticism is the payment of $970 and a free video camcorder for participants,
the requirement that participants routinely spray or have pesticides
sprayed inside their homes, and the involvement of the American Chemistry
Council who contributed $2.1 million to the study (see Daily
News article). Studies have already shown that children are most
vulnerable to pesticides within the first and second year of life, especially
for asthma development, and that children living in households where
pesticides are used suffer elevated rates of leukemia, brain cancer
and soft tissue sarcoma.

According to the Post, “Several EPA officials, all of whom asked
not to be identified for fear of retaliation, also questioned why the
agency removed the study design and its recruitment flier from the EPA's
Web site once some scientists started to complain about the project.
Sheldon said the agency is rewriting how it portrays the research. ‘We
removed it so we could modify it, so it would make more sense,’
she said.”

The reality of the
matter is that the entire EPA pesticide regulatory system relies almost
exclusively on scientific studies generated and paid for by the chemical
industiry - a system clearly riddled with inherent conflicts of interest.
The central question, according to Beyond Pesticides, that people should
be asking is "How is it that, without any label warning or disclosure,
tens of thousands of toxic chemical products are now on the market without
the most basic underlying science necessary to determine the protection
of children from being poisoned?"